The future comes at you faster than you think. The days of padlocks and keypicks is over and its been over for longer than anybody realizes. That’s why it’s so important for both the general public and locksmiths to keep up. Security companies have been doing their utmost to stay on top on an ever-changing landscape of protection and safety in this new, digital age. What follows is a brief list of potential types of locks that may become come in the twenty-first century and the ways that the locksmith service will have to adapt to handle them. In many ways, also this list is speculative, these types of locks have already found their way into businesses and the occasional private home. It’s only a matter of time before they enter into mass-use. It pays to be ready for the day that happens, both for citizens and all types of locksmith services.
- The Future of Finger-prints
Of course, our phones and banks already have finger-print scanners. They’ve been around in some form for the last decade or more. Because of this, all types of locksmith services have already have time to get used to how the technology. But it’s only a matter of time before this type of security becomes commonplace in our homes as well. It’s tempting to think that when this happens, break-ins and burglaries will become a thing of the past. It’s tempting but, unfortunately, that’s just not how crime works. Criminals will always find a way past defenses, even defenses that seem ironclad like fingerprint scanners. That’s why it’s so important to be vigilant. In the near-future, it may become even easier for any type of criminal to simply dust for a person’s fingerprints on a surface and just enter their home without any real effort. To protect against this, locksmiths may have to continually change what fingerprints are entered into the system. Maybe the fingerprint scanner will only work for one resident of the home at a time with backup systems being available for everyone else. Going even further, maybe the residents themselves will be able to change their fingerprints somehow. This is all speculative, of course, but thinking on the scenarios allows us to stay one step ahead of the criminals. The law has to be just as crafty and imaginative as the people it’s trying to protect.
Retinal Scans
In sticking with the theme of bio-metrics, there will have to be a whole new suite of locksmithing skills, a renaissance in the types of locksmith services, to keep up with the emerging field of retinal scanners. This is a bit more complicated than fingerprint scanning and hasn’t yet entered the mainstream but it’s not hard to see it becoming prominent in the next couple decades. It might even more impossible for criminals to replicate the exact shape and nature of somebody’s retina but it isn’t out of the question. As we gain more and more ability to change our biology, some dedicated criminal, and the underworld in general, will gain a greater access to technologies that will allow them to subvert the law. It isn’t a matter of if but when. All types of locksmith services will have to work closer with civilians to keep their homes safe, whether those homes be protected by fingerprints, eyeballs or something even stranger.
Facial Recognition
This is one of the scariest technologies because of the application. One of the most useful, for sure, but one of the most powerful as well. Will we be able to protect our homes in 2030 just by a simple scan of the face? Possibly. But this also means images of our faces, which will be everywhere, will be susceptible to use by burglars who will be able to freely enter anywhere we have been or are trying to protect. Again, all types of locksmith services will have to adapt, finding ways to help us authenticate our exposed identities. The future is wild and weird but we’ll be safe so long as we’re careful.
